Cryodynamics

“…all that thermic energy is sheer impersonal nonsubjective memory of the outside, running the plate-tectonic machinery of the planet via the conductive and convective dynamics of silicate magma flux…”

—D.C. Barker

“The Ahuna Mons cryovolcano allows us to see inside Ceres.”

—Ottaviano Ruesch

Cthell is the name of the Outside that has become inside while retaining its alienness. Jam that much into a space that small (compact the entire of the cosmos into Uttunul) and there’s bound to be trouble—”a pressure cooker”.

But each planet is a memory, a pitiful howl for explosive rebirth. To be imprisoned in a gaol generated by your own attempts to free yourself—such is the fate of the Iron Ocean, ceaselessly shaking off and tied down by tectonic practices. Heat, flows, generation.

Alternatively, there exists cryovulcanism. On blasted planetoids and hidden moons, the icy sludge of the planet’s interior reaches undergoes a parallel divergency that speaks to, and then departs from, ruinous Cthell. Cryovulcanism, beyond trading in the convective dynamics and materials of coldness, icyness, instead of thermic pressure.

Thus the nature of the cryovolcano flips into a different register: instead of oozing magma and ash onto the surface and further recuperating the lithosphere-prison, the cryovolcano is the promise of emissive escape, of total, attritive egress. Whether icy, muddy effluvia is emitted, or as is more common, jets of supercooled ammonia (or other gases), the cyrovolcano is a site of departure, of launching. A rheostatic pressure valve. In the thin atmospheres the cyrovolcano is a space elevator jammed to go only one way: up. A machine for evacuating, for hollowing out, for bringing the inside Outside (which was, of course, the point all along).

Instead of Cthell’s impotent fury, symbolized in the shattered volcanic peak or magmatic bubbling scission, the cryovolcano is a vent, a conduit to the void—and to a final escape.

Keep the passage open.

Even my coilings of uttermost abandonment were too cold. Parting with such iciness. It was not cruelty, but icier still. Your histories, your thoughts, your thinkers run into me now, here at the cusp. You know Aristotle’s name for God? One of many, naturally. The frozen motor. Immobile mobilizer.